


Song Prompt Fills (crisscolfer)

by dizzy



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:15:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 7,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unconnected Chris/Darren ficlets based on song prompts given to me on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Something I Need by One Republic

> _And if we only die once  
>  I wanna die with you _
> 
> Chris/Darren, G

Headlines in the newspaper remind Chris of the inevitability of death, the fragility of life. 

Accidents happen every day. Being famous doesn’t mean you don’t die. It doesn’t mean the people love you can’t be ripped away from you. 

He wakes a sweaty aching mess from a nightmare about being stuck underground and watching the world keep revolving without him. Sometimes, sometimes he forgets that it works like that. In this Hollywood castle where he’s the king and everyone is paid to revolve around him, sometimes it’s easy to forget. 

So many things he can’t pay someone to control for him. He’s had so many reminds of that in the past year, losses and hurt that can’t easily be healed but he’s still living his life. He remembers that it hurts a little less every day, and if he were to just disappear - that’s how people would feel about him. 

What kind of memories would he be leaving people with? 

He gets in his car and drives too fast, a fuck you to the dream imagery still embedded in his mind. His headlights seem too bright, invasive on the night streets. Everything seems louder, sharper, harder. 

He knocks on Darren’s door until his knuckles hurt and then Darren is there, sleepy-eyed and tousled, looking so warm and so perfect that it makes Chris want to cry. 

"What-" Darren starts to ask, and then he stops because Chris’s hands are on his face and Chris’s mouth is on his. 

Darren kisses back. His hands grab at Chris and he goes with it, questioning it only when Chris has stopped.  

"What was that for?" Darren asks, a painfully hopeful smile on his face. 

They need to talk. They need to talk about so  _much_. Chris smiles back. “Because you only live once.”


	2. Always Where I Need to Be by The Kooks

> **_Oh, woh, woh, woh, oh, I’m a man on the scene_ **   
>  **_I’m a man and I can be so obscene_ **   
>  **_Because I always think that I know how to be_ **   
>  **_But I always thought I would end up with you eventually_ **
> 
> Chris/Darren, G

Tape crackles loudly as it unpeels from the heavy roll, laid out crooked over the flaps of a cardboard box sealing shut. Darren tears it off with his teeth instead of the sharp little metal bit on the dispenser meant for exactly that purpose. There’s spit on his fingertips and a damp half of a fingerprint when he smooths it down that will dry into nothing eventually. 

He grabs the taped up box and grunts with the weight of it, steadies himself on his feet and carries it to the truck outside. 

"Did you label it first?" Chris asks. 

"Uh." Darren slides it onto the truck and then grabs a sharpie out of his back pocket. "It weighs a fuck ton. Is it bricks?" 

"What room did it come out of?" Chris asks, sounding distracted and annoyed. He’s rearranging an end table so that it’s braced against the wall of the uHaul. 

"The kitchen," Darren says. 

Chris wiggles the table to test it’s hold and then wipes his hands on his pants. ”Then label it kitchen.”

Chris braces himself with a hand on Darren’s shoulder to hop down, though they have the back lowered as a walkway. 

"Kitchen bricks…" Darren says, loud enough for Chris’s to still overhear. He grins when it gets the laugh he wants. 


	3. The Great Escape by Patrick Watson

> **_Don’t be afraid, just eat up all the gray_ **   
>  **_and it will fade all away._ **   
>  **_Don’t let yourself fall down._ **
> 
> Darren-centric, angsty with a hopeful ending  
> Chris/Darren, PG

Everywhere Darren turns another door closes. Sometimes he’s the one with his hand on the knob. Sometimes it’s slamming in his face. 

Every day of his life it feels like he has to walk away from someone that needs him. So many people whose names and faces flicker across his mind at random moments, and he’s gutted at all the friends he’s loved and then left behind. Would they still be there if he went to find them again?  Would they want this guy, or would they just shake their heads and keep talking about their old friend like they’re gathered at a wake?

So many people out there; so many people that know his face, that know his name, that want to know every part of him.

Has he given too much away? Has he given away so much to all these strangers that he doesn’t have anything left for the people that he wants something back from himself?

[[MORE]]

Sometimes he thinks about ending it all. Not in that forever on the bathroom floor kind of way, but just - just taking a hammer to all the mirrors, covering the walls with writing, lighting it all up in figurative flames and walking away from the rubble.

He could buy a cabin in the woods and grow a beard. No newspapers, no internet, no tv, no cell phone. Him and his goddamn guitar and that’s all he’d need, right? Except the bed would be cold and lonely and he loves music but he’s not sure if he’d love it as much without an audience to listen to him play it.

Music is connecting with people, for him. He needs people. He needs connection.

He always thought he was that kind of dude that could make everyone love him. And he was right, mostly; except for all those people that don’t love him just because everyone else does, and all those other people that love him so much they want to break him apart because of it. All those people digging for his flaws, beating and bruising with their words until they make the flaws appear. All those people that don’t even think they need to know him to know what’s wrong with him.

And those people that do know him, those people that know him and know exactly what’s wrong with him, and he wants to run from them and to them at the same time. He wants to scream at them that they should help him fix this, but no one can help him. No one can fix this.

He’s got a good life, except when it isn’t.

He’s a good guy, except when he isn’t.

He breaks someone’s heart and it’s messy and long and drawn out and it doesn’t matter that they both knew it was coming. He breaks a heart and wants to beg forgiveness and scramble to put it back together but if he does that, they’ll just end up right back in the same place all over again.

He broke someone else’s heart, too; he broke Chris and Chris broke him right back and they both walked away.

Darren’s tired of breaking. He’s tired of hurting. He’s tired of being tired. He’s tired of smiling through breaking and hurting and exhaustion. He’s tired of walking away.

He picks up his phone and taps out a number with blunt, nail-bitten fingers.

"Chris. Hey. It’s me. I… yeah. I know. Look - listen, stop. Just." Pauses, ragged breath. "How do you feel running away?"


	4. Talk Show Host by Radiohead

> **_You want me, well fucking well come and find me_ **
> 
> Chris/Darren, R. Pretty angsty, whoops. 

Darren opens the door when Chris shows up. 

They don’t really talk. 

They don’t talk much at all anymore. Not face to face. That’s not how it works. 

They walk to the bedroom. Hard kisses, bruising touches. They fuck with too little lube and too much feeling all contained inside. The words that escape are accidental and they pay the price for them later. 

Afterward Chris gets up first. He showers, he dresses, he walks out the door. 

Darren doesn’t know where he’s going. He’s not allowed to ask. Sometimes he does anyway.  

Chris gets mad when he asks too much.

This time he doesn’t ask. He just lays in the bed, feeling the come trickle out of him, feeling the sweat cool and grow disgusting on his skin.

He hears the door shut and his body grows tight all over, ache in his abs and in his ass and in his heart.  

Everyone else - all those assholes making judgement calls, they all think they know how this works. They think Darren’s the one with the brakes on. 

It’s not like either of them can tell anyone they’re wrong. Correction is acknowledgement, and they don’t do that. Smile for the cameras, cozy up to the  _right_ people. 

They’re not the right people for each other. 

(But they could be.)

Darren’s ready to be.

He’s just waiting for Chris to come and find him. 


	5. Bloom by The Paper Kites

> **_Can I take it to a morning_ **   
>  **_Where the fields are painted gold_ **   
>  **_And the trees are filled with memories_ **   
>  **_Of the feelings never told_**?
> 
> Chris/Darren, G

Darren finds Chris as the dawn breaks, asleep on the bed of a pickup truck with the tailgate down. Darren jumps up with his feet on a tire, his arms clinging to the side of the truck, craning to look over and see.

There he is, there’s Chris - mouth is open, slack, and lips a warm bitten pink, snoring. 

Darren’s still a little drunk and he’s not that gentle as he shakes Chris awake. 

"What?" Chris asks, rubbing his eyes. There’s irritation in his voice and that object of previous admiration, that beautiful mouth, is working it’s way into a scowl. 

"Come on," Darren whispers, trying not to disturb the unfamiliar faces that also chose this as a resting place. "I want to watch the sunset." 

It takes Chris a few more seconds for Darren’s words to catch up to his waking mind, but then he nods and crawls to the tailgate. He stumbles as much as steps down but Darren catches him. 

"Did you sleep at all?" Chris whispers. He buries his face in Darren’s neck and shudders with a yawn while Darren rubs a circle around his back. He’s wrapped up in Darren’s hoodie to ward off the morning bite to the air. 

"Nah," Darren says. There was an hour there where it seemed like a likely thing but too much laughter, catching up with friends he hasn’t seen in years, enjoying the freedom of a field in the middle of fucking nowhere Michigan. They’d talked and laughed and remembered until the fire crackled down to nothing and every surface off the ground had a person passed out on it. 

He can’t even really remember now when he lost Chris, except that it hadn’t seemed to matter as long as he still knew he was somewhere close by. 

He grabs Chris’s hand and they walk together, away from the little claimed plot of land, until they reach a fence with a gap in it. 

"Do you know where we’re going?" Chris asks. "Are we just walking aimlessly?"

The sky above them gets lighter, blue-black fading into a pre-dawn murky mix of pink and gray and orange. 

"Um. No?" Darren says. "That okay?" 

Chris leans his head on Darren’s shoulder and smiles. “That sounds good, actually.”


	6. Strong by One Direction

> **_pages between us written with no end_ **
> 
> Chris/Darren, G

"Have you read his new one?" Chuck asks, as they pass a display in the bookstore. 

Darren glances up at the picture, black and white next to an image of the book’s cover. In bold, yellow letters above it:Chris Colfer.

It’s an old picture they have. He can’t be more than 25 in it. The sight jogs all kinds of memories in Darren that sit uncomfortably. 

"Not yet," Darren says. "Didn’t really seem like my style."

Chuck gives him a look like he isn’t buying it. ”Lucy read it. Couldn’t put it down. He’s one of her favorite authors.”

"Well." Darren shoves his hands into his pockets. "Good for him, then."  

*

Chuck leaves to go meet his wife after a few minutes. 

Darren should get back home, but he lingers. He likes bookstores. He used to be too full of frenetic energy to sit still and enjoy them but he’s mellowed with age. 

His phone jumps in his pocket with a text. 

 _"Where are you?"_ it reads. 

Darren writes back. “ _Bookstore_.  _Want coffee?”_

“ _I’ll meet you. Need to get some fresh air anyway. Be there in 20.”_

Now he has time to kill and when Darren circles back through the store to get to the coffee shop next door he passes by the display again.

He stops this time, grabbing a copy. He has time to kill.

*

He’s settled deep into a comfortable plush chair, a coffee to start off and a book waiting to be read.

Instead of opening it straight away, he turns it over in his hands. His eyes skim the words but he doesn’t really take any of it in. They catch on the author blurb and he smiles. 

_Chris Colfer currently resides in NYC with two cats and a very peculiar houseguest he can’t seem to shake._


	7. Bonfire Heart by James Blunt

> __ But I’ve been looking at you   
>  For a long, long time   
>  Just trying to break through,   
>  Trying to make you mine   
> 
> 
> Chris/Darren, PG

The guy at the bakery has dark curly hair and warm eyes. 

He would smell like cinnamon, Chris thinks. Of course, this isn’t verified information. He just - he looks like the kind of guy who would smell like cinnamon. He works in a bakery, after all. Cinnamon and baking go together to Chris, takes him back in time to his grandmother’s kitchen. 

Not that the bakery guy would smell like his grandmother. Chris hopes, at least. He turns his mouth into his palm to hide the smile that visual provokes. This idle kind of wondering happens sometimes as he sits and waits on his order to be ready. 

It gets a little dangerous sometimes. He amuses himself entirely too easily. 

The bakery guy amuses Chris, too. Sort of. In that  _does he stuff his jeans or is his ass really that perfect_ and that  _did he actually buy that shirt one size too small_ kind of way.  _  
_

Chris is only human, after all, and the guy is attractive. Not like just-walked-out-of-Vogue model attractive, but - attractive. Short and a little round in the tummy (but he works in a bakery; Chris isn’t judging) and the kind of guy that just exudes happiness.

Also, seriously, that  _ass_. 

Chris gets enough time to look, too. He’s in here once a week, collecting the same assortment of muffins and donuts for the weekly HR meetings. As a lowly intern sort, it’s actually one of the more pleasant duties piled upon him. It’s a chance to get out and… well. The scenery, and all. 

"Almost ready for you," he says. He has his arms crossed over the counter, looking at Chris, who sits at one of the small tables in the shop. "You want something while you wait?" 

Chris has been hedging his bets and playing that guessing game for a while now. He’s looked and he _thinks_ he’s seen the guy looking, too. He decides that there’s no better time than now to take that plunge. “Your name?”

"Darren," the guy says, immediately, beaming. "And you’re Chris. So,  _Chris_ , would you like something while you wait?”

"Your number?" Chris says, since - hell, the first time went over well. He crosses one leg over the other, knowing how good these pants look on him. 

Darren laughs, but it’s not a mocking sound. “My number, hmm?” 

Chris shrugs. “Unless you’re seeing someone.” 

"What if I’m straight?" Darren asks, still leaning into the counter. He’s  _really_ looking at Chris now, no questions about it. 

Chris tries to quell that nervous high school ugly duckling that still lives inside of him. College was kind to him. Picking guys up, that’s a thing he can  _do_ now. 

And if he’s shot down, he’s shot down. It’ll be a disappointment but not a tragedy. He finally answers Darren. ”Then you’ll tell me before I make a fool of myself, I hope.”

Darren pushes back off the counter and walks over to a display case. “Come on. Have a cookie. You like chocolate chip? I just made these.” 

"Um." Chris doesn’t really know what to make of this. "Yeah, I do." 

He stands up and walks over the counter, nerves suddenly inching in despite his little internal pep talk. 

"These are great," Darren says. "Seriously, like. I  _outdid_ myself.” 

"How much-" 

"On the house." Darren smiles at him and Chris watches as he slides a cookie into a sleeve with a pair of tongs. "Still warm, even." 

Chris shifts on his feet as Darren walks back to the counter. He reaches out for it but Darren makes a  _nah!_ sound and grabs a sharpie. 

Then Chris watches as Darren carefully writes down his number on the bottom of the sleeve and only then hands it to Chris, grinning ear to ear.  

Chris lifts the cookie up and takes a bite of the edge that peeks past the wrapper. “You were right,” he says, licking at a bit of melted chocolate on his lip. “These cookies are delicious.”


	8. Make Damn Sure by Taking Back Sunday

> _I just wanna break you down so badly_   
>  _Well I trip over everything you say_   
>  _I just wanna break you down so badly_   
>  _In the worst way (worst way)_
> 
> Chris/Darren, PG. Angsty!

"You’ve got layers," Darren says with drunk intent.

His finger jabs at Chris in the shoulder but the pain doesn’t register. Numbed by whiskey and exhaustion, it blends easily into the soreness of his thighs and arms from dance routines, the soreness of his heart from proximity to what it can’t want.

Chris sinks down into a too-soft cushion of the couch. He doesn’t want to be at this party, but he’s here, and it’s a dumb kind of night so he’s drinking too much and so is Darren and when they’re dumb in the same place at the same time that’s when bad things happen.

Like Darren, now, sitting too close and staring too hard.

And talking. Darren’s still talking.”And you think I don’t see them. You think because we don’t talk much anymore that I don’t still notice you, and you’re just - you’re fucking wrong, okay? I’m just this dumb guy that you have to work with sometimes, but I get you, and you hate it, don’t you? When you’re pissed off I can tell and when you’re standing there and you look a million miles away I know you’re writing in your head and when you, you wear that black hoodie when you’re having a bad day and you sit by yourself and you think about the future, don’t you? And that used to make you happy but I don’t think it does anymore. You’re a fucking overachiever and you’re too good at it.”

Chris is drawn up so tight that he wants to shake but Darren won’t stop talking.

"Because you don’t know where any of this is going, do you? You had all those fucking plans and now they’re happening and it’s too easy for you, isn’t it? Life isn’t fucking fair but you found your way and you’re so f fucking young and - you know, I have this theory, I was thinking - it’s actually kind of shitty when you hit the top too soon because then you just don’t, you don’t have anything to do but look down at everyone else still having something to keep trying for. You got what you want and you thought you’d be happy but you aren’t-"

"Like you’re one to talk," Chris hisses at him, and he tries to get up but his legs are wobbly and Darren grabs his arms.

"I never said I was happy with the way things are right now," Darren says. "You’re the one putting on that act. You’re buying time until you find some new dreams. Something new that’s worth working for."

Chris stands and he looks down at Darren’s fingers against his skin, the hair on the back of his palm and feels the callouses. He’s seen those hands on him so many times and in so many places and the memories make him burn and hurt and want at the same time.

"You make me _miserable_ ,” Chris says.

"Yeah? Well, you make me pretty fucking miserable, too." Darren looks down at his drink. "Sucks to be the one that wasn’t worth it."

Now is when Chris walks away. That’s what it says in the script that they run off of.

"Remember  New York," Chris says, and it harkens back to hours spent talking and punch drunk planning a future that they’d both have it give it all up for. "Sometimes that’s what i think about."

He means it to be a peace offering but maybe it’s just a sad reminder because Darren just shrugs and knocks back the rest of his whiskey.


	9. Somewhere Only We Know by Lily Allen

> **_And if you have a minute why don’t we go  
>  Talk about it somewhere only we know?_ **
> 
> Chris/Darren, R

Everyone in the bar knows that they’re a _thing_.

It’s not a big bar. It’s near enough to an exit off the highway that it’s crowded on weekends, though.  It’s a popular place for the people that come from towns too small to offer anonymity from scorn and prejudice.

It’s a gay bar, the kind that cards but doesn’t look too closely.

Darren, the boy that comes in high as a kite more often or not, hogs the stage on karaoke night, sings like it’s music that flows through his veins and not blood, and pathetically, adorably ceases to acknowledge anyone else in the room the door opens and it’s…

Chris, the quiet one that started out sitting at a table near the back but has migrated his way to stage left. Who doesn’t drink often and sits with a notebook and spends half of the night writing and never stays long when Darren isn’t there.

*

They dance sometimes.

Darren’s always on the dance floor, always moving to the beat of something. It doesn’t matter if he has a partner, or partners, or he’s by himself. He’s not the best dance, or the most graceful, or the hottest. But he’s definitely the person that gets most into it, who gives the most over to it.

He’s always soaked in sweat by the time he leaves, t-shirt stained under the arms and around the neck and plastered to his back.

Chris is less of a sure thing. Sometimes he’s bright and it doesn’t take much time at all before he’s giving in to Darren’s eyes on him and joining him to dance.

But sometimes he stays in his seat and stares like the world is his enemy and he needs to stand guard against it.

*

For the first few months they miss each other as often as they meet.

And then, with time and what appears to be not much consultation, they fall into a schedule.

They arrive within an hour of each other.

Sometimes Darren coaxes him into a dance. Sometimes Chris’s stormy expression steals Darren’s vibrance away and they sit huddled together.

One night they take over a booth in the back and people try not to stare too much - the bouncers are fond of them and the bartender has a teenager of her own. She’s two seconds away from adopting them on any give night, but too much involvement and she’d have to acknowledge that they shouldn’t be here at all.

So she watches, makes sure no one harasses them, tries to give them some space to be.

*

One night the cars stay parked outside but the boys don’t come in.

If anyone were to look outside, they’d see them standing together and swaying. They’d see Chris with his hands fisted tight in the back of Darren’s jacket. They’d see Darren on his tip toes to hook his chin over Chris’s shoulder.

They’d see a kiss, not a first one but a first one all to themselves.They’d see smiles, and the movement of lips whispering promises.

They’d see giggling and a graceful flush to Chris’s face and then Darren’s hand inching toward the handle of his car.

They’d see movement, the kind of _elbow the person beside you and snicker_ rocking of a car and then if they stuck around thirty minutes later they’d see Darren’s car drive away and they’d see Chris walking back to his own, pausing for just a minute outside of the door and looking up at the sky and laughing.


	10. To the Ramones by Dustin's Bar Mitzvah

> **_You made me walk through the pouring rain_ **   
>  **_Just to tell me to my face_ **   
>  **_You said it would sound better if I came round to your place_ **
> 
> Chris/Darren, PG

As soon as they get together, they start to break up. 

The first time because it just feels too hard. Tabloids, photographers everywhere, families and friends harassed. Privacy is non-existent and the backlash is quick and harsh. 

They scream at each other harsh words about how much is too much and what this is really worth and what it’ll cost them both. Darren speeds away too fast and the roads are slick and wet and Chris is so worried that he gets right in his car and follows after. 

Five miles from Chris’s house Darren realizes Chris is following him and pulls over. They kiss in the rain and it’s not romantic at all, it’s wet and kind of cold and Chris gets mud all over the shoes he just bought two weeks ago and someone catcalls as they drive by. 

That breakup lasted seventeen minutes. 

The second is because of lies. Not Chris’s, not Darren’s. But everyone else’s. They’re a year into it and the doubt cracks. Chris was never sure if Darren would really want to commit to fucking only one body for the rest of however long they’re together. No one else is really sure either, and anyone he’s photographed with becomes a big deal to the press. 

It’s easy to believe Darren when he’s there to defend himself, but it’s harder when Chris is seeing the photos on the internet uploaded only moments after. His imagination runs away with him in the worst kinds of ways and he breaks up with Darren over a text message that Darren doesn’t get until he finds a phone charger to use the next morning.

The phone charger he finds happens to be in Chris’s kitchen, because he had someone drop him off. Chris walks in just as Darren’s seeing it. They make up moments later. 

Technically that one lasted about ten hours, but Darren says it doesn’t count since he didn’t actually know about it. 

The third is distance. 

It’s less of a joke. It’s a few weeks stretched out, a tearful agreement that maybe being with other people is the best since Darren’s shooting for two months in Toronto and as soon as he’s back Chris is off on a European book tour. They decide they’ll see where they stand when they’re back in the same country. 

They both try it - being with other people. 

It just doesn’t work. A hasty weekend trip ends with Chris packing a few suitcases and moving into Darren’s Toronto apartment for the rest of his shooting, and an extra ticket booked for Europe after. 

After that they don’t  _break up._ The words have more gravity with memories attached. So they promise without promising, they vow with their actions. They fight but they don’t Flee. They stick around, and they make it all work out together. 


	11. I Choose You by Sara Bareilles

>   
>  **_I am not scared of the elements_ **   
>  **_I am under-prepared, but I am willing_ **   
>  **_And even better_ **   
>  **_I get to be the other half of you_ **   
> 
> 
> I’m not even going to begin taking credit for all of this. **Co-written with**   **[Bee](http://crisscolfmas.tumblr.com)** , who took what I wrote and made it a fucking _million times_ smarter and better. 
> 
> Chris/Darren, G.

Chris doesn’t fall in love with Darren, he crashes headfirst like it was a biological imperative, like his body’s set of chemicals that create euphoric attachment were waiting to flood his veins for just him, and no one else.   
  
The primal, physical attraction he harbored on the cute guy with the curls singing about Harry Potter before Darren was ever a flesh and bone person in his life didn’t help. It was a tremulous, unstable setup just waiting on a catalyst.   
  
But with Darren there, talking to him and laughing with him, that simple attraction is watered and fed and grows and grows into something more, something big and daunting and scary in its strength and solidity, and Chris just - he tries not to let it get in the way. Of his job, of their friendship.   
  
Somewhere between year one and year two, it just gets hard. Their relationship evolves, like all do over time, but instead of adapting they teeter on the brink of extinction, leaving him (them) brittle and breakable. Fondness spikes into bitterness, and when Chris can’t have it all he stops wanting any of it.   
  
They can’t exist like that.   
  
Maybe that’s when - maybe that’s why - Darren starts to want him back.   
  
He’s never lied to Chris about the fact that in the beginning, he didn’t feel anything. Chris was too young, he thinks; young and not what Darren considers attractive, and personality can’t overcome everything. They had chemistry, sure; that’s why Darren was cast, that’s why the show got so much attention for it, why audiences and critics had such a reaction.   
  
But sometimes a solution that doesn’t react at room temperature needs a little heat, needs to encounter just the right environment, and maybe they needed that push that that Chris growing distant gave to them.   
  
Since the beginning they were teeming with potential, and evolution can’t be undone, so all that’s left to do is evolve again and then again, to constantly readjust together, to find what makes them last and most importantly, hold onto it through changes of season and time.   
  
Darren says it wasn’t that he wasn’t attracted to Chris to start with, but Chris can’t convince him he doesn’t care. He’s done with feeling broken and flawed right down to a molecular level, done with how the curse of being unique always hung over him, this predisposition for never quite having the same experiences of love and growth as everyone else. He’s done lingering in the shadows when he can be turning his face to the light of what he has right now. Darren likes the man that he is now, who he has become and who his surroundings and all the love and loss and hurt and rejection have bent and shaped him into.   
  
And, eventually, Chris sees it too. The length of his tenacity, the solidness of his surety of self, the curve of his off-center wit, the finished product of a hundred billion chemical processes and made entirely of celestial debris, and finds he loves himself, too.


	12. Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid

> _**Look at this trove** _   
>  _**Treasures untold** _
> 
> Chris/Darren, G (passing reference to pot use)

"So am I Ariel or Eric?" Darren asks. He’s laying upside down with his feet on the couch and his back on the floor, strumming his guitar with his eyes closed. 

"You’re Sebastian," Chris says. He’s on the couch, his knee overlapping Darren’s ankle. There’s a pencil between his teeth and one stuck behind his ear and his hair is a mess. His eyes are glazed over like they get when they’re high, or he’s writing. (Or both, right now.) "Or Flounder." 

"Can I be their love child?" Darren asks. "Fucking OTP, man." 

"It is disturbing that you know that phrase," Chris says around the pencil. It’s a little slobbery after talking so he spits it out. It hits his leg and then bounces onto Darren’s chest. 

"Ew." Darren picks it between his fingertips. "Gross." 

"You’re gross," Chris mutters. "I’m making you the girl." 

"Sweet." Darren beams like that’s what he wanted the whole time and starts to strum and sing. " _Up where they walk, up where they run-“_

Chris looks down at him and smiles. 


	13. Night Terror by Laura Marling

> _**If I look back and he is screaming,** _   
>  _**I’d left him dreaming, the dangers fade,** _   
>  _**I’ll run back and shake him tightly** _   
>  _**And scream “if they want him, then they’re gonna have to fight me!”** _
> 
> Chris/Darren, R - warning for gay bashing, violence. 

Chris is the one that’s attacked, but Darren is the one they break. 

Because Darren can’t do anything but  _watch_. 

He can’t do anything but watch while Chris is beaten, while they shout filthy words and insults at him, call him names and tear the clothes off of his body. 

They don’t rape him, but the invasion is almost complete despite it. They touch him everywhere and leave the marks on his body like a temporary brand. Slap marks and bruises, the press of fingers to his throat and a belt across his ass. 

_Fags like to get spanked, don’t they?_

Darren saw the burn in their eyes, and for all that their hatred is born out of disgust for what don’t understand the pleasure they get from it still seems almost sexual. 

Chris doesn’t say one word the entire time. 

He doesn’t cry out. He doesn’t  _cry_. 

He just goes away, somewhere else in his own mind, and Darren almost envies that. 

Darren can’t go anywhere. He struggles around the bandana in his mouth that serves as a gag, the bitter taste of sweat from it on his tongue, and the rope that ties his wrists too tight behind his back. There’s a stabbing pain of dislocation in his shoulder from pulling too hard against it and the feeling of his phone digging into his thigh taunts him. 

He can’t  _do_ anything. 

He can’t do anything until they decide they’ve had their fun and he thinks, the whole fucking time he thinks they’re going to kill them both. He sees the gleam of knives in the hands of a couple of them and he thinks that this is where they’ll die. 

But they don’t die. 

They walk away from it - limping and bruised and damaged to the core, but alive. 

* 

Chris wakes up and Darren is screaming. 

All he can do is hold him and hope the nightmares stop eventually. 


	14. Come Over by Kenny Chesney

> _**I told you I wouldn’t call, I told you I wouldn’t care** _   
>  _**But baby climbing the walls gets me nowhere** _   
>  _**I don’t think that I can take this bed getting any colder** _   
>  _**Come over, come over, come over, come over, come over** _
> 
> Chris/Darren, PG

Darren keeps so busy because he knows the minute he stops, this is how he gets. 

Antsy. Pacing the floor, thinking too hard. Opening the cabinets and staring too long at all the bottles there. 

Drunk. Sloppy and daring, pushing all the boundaries. Phone in his hand contemplating calls that will open doors he shouldn’t open. Old friends, old lovers. New friends, new lovers. People that fit into both categories or neither. 

Nostalgia. High on what his life is and gutted from losing what it used to be. He scrolls the photos on his phone and wonders why he cares so much about cataloging the memories when he never stops to take the time to revisit them later on. 

* 

Chris. 

That’s what it comes back to, when he’s alone. 

When he’s not alone, too, which is increasingly a problem and the only things that seem to help are drinking copious amounts of alcohol and surrounding himself too with too many events and functions and parties and friends and people willing to keep him engaged as he can possibly fit into the hours allowed in the day. 

It works, almost always, but once in a while he hits a point where he’s so exhausted and nothing is coming out  _right_ but by this point everyone knows he won’t stop of his own volition. 

Ricky compared him to a dog that won’t stop bringing you the ball to throw even though it’s panting and looks like it’s about to pass out. 

And yeah, maybe Darren needs a night to recover from himself and the damage he does. He still thinks having his mother call and order him to was just plain  _wrong_ of them, like man. The bro code just means nothing anymore. 

They’re wrong, anyway. 

They think he needs sleep. They think a few hours of sober rest in his own bed will do the trick. 

 _Sleep_ isn’t what he needs. 

No one really knows what he needs. 

(Except maybe Chris.)

*

The room is too hot, then it’s too cold. 

It’s too quiet, but music is too loud. 

He can’t get words onto the page when he tries to write and his fingers miss the chords he knows by heart when he tries to play. 

He gives up at half past ten and picks up the phone. 

Chris answers on the third ring. “Darren?”

"Hey," Darren says, pulse pounding in his throat. 

It feels like tearing a brick wall down, every time. Like if they want to get to what they both need, they have to put the work in. It’s so fucked up that the obstacles they keep needing to overcome at the end of the day are just… each other. _  
_

"Are you back in town?" Chris asks.

He doesn’t blame Chris for not knowing. He’s been so many places lately, dipped his toes into so many time zones that he can barely keep track of himself. He wakes up morning to morning jarred by unfamiliar surroundings, even though he can’t remember the last time he stayed in one place long enough for it to  _be_ familiar. 

(Except that one room, with the blue walls and the soft sheets and the beautiful face he woke up staring right at.) 

"Yeah," Darren says. He looks up at the ceiling fan lazily spinning on the lowest setting, giving off the faintest breeze. "Yeah, I am." 

"Oh." Awkwardness prevails. 

They both try so hard to hold back. 

One night, Darren thinks. Just to reset his engines for a little while. He clears his throat and says, “Come over?”

They’re as good for each other as they are bad; Chris said it once. He’s never more inspired than when he’s got Darren fucked out on the bed snoring behind him.

Maybe Chris will stay the next day, too. Maybe a weekend and Darren can patch himself back up. 

(Maybe forever, and he’d be pretty fucking okay.)

* 

Chris shows up half an hour later. 

"Just tonight?" He asks Darren. They’re standing in the doorway, too close and both of them trying to contain the crackling sense of pleasure at the lack of distance between their bodies. 

"Yeah," Darren says. "If you want."

"We’ll see." Chris smiles at him then, muted but real, and cups the back of Darren’s neck to kiss him. 

 _We’ll see_. Darren can work with that. 


	15. Mr. Brightside by The Killers

> **_Now they’re going to bed_ **   
>  **_And my stomach is sick_ **   
>  **_And it’s all in my head_ **   
>   
>  Chris/Darren, PG-13. Angsty!

  
Darren confesses all the crimes Chris wishes that he’d keep to himself. Ignorance would be bliss but there’s also a sick pleasure in watching Darren stumble with apologies. 

Because Darren is a golden boy. Darren never crosses a line with people. People just move the line for him. 

Chris is no exception, save the ways that Darren  _makes_ him into one. 

*

They’re supposed to meet for breakfast. 

Darren shows up somewhere between still drunk and hungover, smelling like sex. They eat in Chris’s kitchen, conversation sparse. 

Darren stops eating and Chris watches him while he sweats, literally and figuratively, until his palm slaps down onto the table. “Yeah, sorry. Gonna hurl.” 

Chris throws the rest of the food away while Darren is in the bathroom and then goes to find something Darren can take. 

It’s not even that bad. After his stomach settles and he’s had a shower, Chris gets a Darren that wants nothing more than to lay in bed all day, cuddle, and watch tv between naps.

Chris has had worse days, though he’d prefer not to have to earn it in that particular way.

* 

Ashley doesn’t have to say it for Chris to know she’s thinking it. 

The question everyone is probably thinking:  _what did you expect?_

Because this is Darren. This has always been Darren. He’s living life hard, he’s working with everything he’s got and playing the same way. 

He’s embracing every opportunity life hands him, even the ones that are five-nine with a rack of plastic. 

Darren doesn’t mean to hurt people. He’s just got this inability to function outside of the moment sometimes. He loves to make the people around him happy but if you’re not around him he’s probably too busy to be thinking of you at all. 

* 

To his benefit, Darren’s never promised Chris anything. 

Falling in love didn’t come with a contract. They don’t, as a general rule, as anything of each other. 

And maybe that was okay when Chris had other people, too. But Chris doesn’t now, because Chris is ready to be one person’s  _person_ and he made the silly mistake of thinking that Darren was really just waiting on him. 

Darren isn’t waiting on anyone. Chris isn’t sure he’d even know how. 

* 

Darren comes back to him, at least. Time after time, Chris is where he wants to retreat to. He gets something from Chris that no one else can give him and Chris is intensely, frustratingly grateful for that. 

His friends want the best for him. His mother is  _concerned_. His ex keeps calling and Chris knows he’d be allowed a second chance at that in a heartbeat, but he can’t take it. 

He’d be happy. He’d be loved. He’d have someone to commit to. But he’s had that before and it was nice, it was  _good_ , but the passion was too short lived and what was left when it faded wasn’t enough. It wasn’t Darren. 

* 

If he ever thought for a moment that Darren didn’t love him back, he’d shut the door and change the locks. 

But Darren loves him. Chris has never had a doubt and it doesn’t matter how many other people get to lay their hands on Darren - no one else has his heart. 


End file.
